


Four Times Peggy and Susan Did Not Shoot Things (and the one time they did)

by rthstewart



Series: The Narnians Assemble AU [3]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe-rthverse, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Multi, Original Character Death(s), Spies & Secret Agents, War Crimes, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26289919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/pseuds/rthstewart
Summary: Susan Pevensie, Peggy Carter and the four times they did not shoot fascists, and the one time they did. A relationship spanning decades that is marked by lipstick, cabbage, coffee, spying, and scotch.
Series: The Narnians Assemble AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/235293
Comments: 49
Kudos: 134
Collections: Narnia Fic Exchange 2020





	1. 12 June 1944

**Author's Note:**

  * For [guardyanangel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/guardyanangel/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Narnians Assemble!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/506413) by [rthstewart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/pseuds/rthstewart). 
  * Inspired by [Rat And Sword Go To War](https://archiveofourown.org/works/386322) by [rthstewart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/pseuds/rthstewart). 
  * Inspired by [Susan And Peggy Go Shooting (Again)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2404067) by [rthstewart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/pseuds/rthstewart). 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 12 June 1944, somewhere between Oradour-sur-Glane and Saint-Amand-Montrond.  
> There is cabbage, lipstick and spying but no coffee or scotch (but there is wine).

On 12 June 1944, somewhere between Oradour-sur-Glane and Saint-Amand-Montrond, Mademoiselle Marguerite Bernard and Mademoiselle Jeanne-Louise Lambert take a ride in a mule cart on 12 June 1944.

* * *

From the seat of the mule-drawn cart loaded with onions and cabbages, Marguerite waved to the soldiers as their armored column lumbered by. She mimed smoking, hoping for a cigarette. Next to her in the cart, Jeanne smiled, waved at the jeering, flirting soldiers of the 2nd SS-Panzerdivision _Das Reich_ and then gestured to her pregnant stomach. The soldiers perched atop their tanks waved back. The flags and armbands made clear who they were - _Das Reich_ was an armored division of the military arm of the _Schutzstaffel_ \- the SS.

"They are so good at killing," Marguerite - Codenamed _Dancer_ \- muttered quietly to Jeanne - Codenamed _Rat_. Das Reich was heading north to the Normandy beaches to slaughter Allied troops that had landed barely a week ago.

"I hope they don't notice that you aren't actually pregnant, Jeanne." Marguerite's French was with a heavy Provençal accent.

"Or that you do not actually smoke, Marguerite?" Jeanne's own accent had become more difficult to pinpoint after so many months in northern France. She thought it was still some part Pays de la Loire with a recent sheen of Normandie.

"Au revoir!" they called at the retreating backs of the last of the column. A staff car with many men with SS armbands and flags honked and roared by.

Still, they waited long enough by the side of the road that the mule, Amélie, stomped her foot and shook her long ears. They were fortunate the Nazis hadn't requisitioned her and hauled her off to starve to death in Belgium. At least mules could eat grass. The French weren't so fortunate.

Slowly, the sounds of engines, treads on gravel, and grinding gears faded and the trees around them ceased quivering. They were again by themselves on a French country road.

"Did you get the armored numbers?" Marguerite asked.

"I was too busy flirting with butchers," Jeanne replied, lifting her skirt to show where she had been keeping a tally of the tanks and armored cars on the inside of her leg with a grease pencil. "Did you get the number of men?"

Marguerite opened the hand that had not been waving to show a clicker.

Jeanne gently slapped the reins on Amélie's rump and the stolid mule stepped back on to the track. She clicked her tongue, "Hut! Hut!", and the mule plodded forward.

Marguerite scooted over on the benched seat of the cart and rapped it with her knuckles. "Toc, toc Lieutenant!"

A hinge in the seat of the cart slowly opened and the Lieutenant's head popped out from the compartment. "They gone?"

"They are," Marguerite replied, in British English.

Jeanne moved to the other side of the seat so that the American flyer could unfold himself from the hiding place, built into the front of the cart and part of the undercarriage.

He was thin enough that they'd padded his hips and chest and dressed him in a skirt, blouse, wig, colour on his lips, and long scarf. They couldn't keep him shaved long enough for the disguise to be especially effective but it had passed muster at night and at a distance.

"It was the SS Panzers?" the airman asked.

"Das Reich," Jeanne replied.

"Nazi cocksuckers," he gritted out, then looked a little embarrassed. "Excuse me, ladies."

"The reports are that that division hung nearly 100 men in Tulle on Tuesday and the next day went to Oradour-sur-Glane and killed hundreds of civilians. They burned a church down with women and children in it. You may call them whatever you like," Marguerite said.

"One woman made it out of the church," Jeanne added, clutching the reins tightly in her hands. "We're still searching for any survivors among the men and trying to count the dead."

"It looked like to me to be about 500 dead. I was on a bicycle and got close enough to see a crucified baby," the flyer said soberly. He muttered another, even more vile, and wholly appropriate, curse.

There was war. And then there were war crimes. There was no question in Jeanne's mind which these atrocities in Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane were. Whether there could be any justice against an entire division of the Waffen-SS was… something for Edmund to ponder, she supposed.

"Just make it out of here, Lieutenant," Jeanne said. "You'll be debriefed when you get back, probably in Dover. Tell them what you saw. The only way the dead can tell their story is through the living."

"Any idea how I'll do that? Get back?"

"The Maquis you're going to have ongoing contacts with British intelligence," Marguerite replied. "They'll arrange something, though it will take some time. They'll communicate through _messages personnels_ in BBC broadcasts with instructions. My guess is someone will fly a Lizzie down, drop off supplies for the Maquis and take you back. Whether you stay here or get a flight out, it's not going to be safe." 

"Neither's flying daytime sorties over Avord. Or hiding in woods and haystacks or under cabbage. I'll try to make myself useful. Any idea how long it might take?"

Jeanne did some quick figuring in her head. "They won't try to extract you until at least the next full moon period. Probably be the end of July or beginning of August."

"Maybe we'll be in Paris by then, drinking champagne."

"Göring stole most of the champagne from the châteaux of France and took it back to the Kehlsteinhaus," Marguerite said.

"I'd settle for a drop of good American whiskey."

"Scotch," Jeanne said at the same time Marguerite did and they both laughed.

"I'll take your ladies' word for it."

They went another few kilometers and Amélie stopped at a meandering track that went off to the east. Jeanne was very glad the mule couldn't talk for all the secrets of the Resistance she would be able to reveal.

"This is your stop, Lieutenant," Jeanne said.

Marguerite pointed. "Follow that path about 2 kilometers. There's a farm. You're expected. Tell them Dancer and Rat sent you."

The flyer shucked off the scarf and wig, jumped down from the wagon and slid out of the skirt and blouse. He handed the clothes back to Marguerite. They'd burned his uniform days ago and he was now wearing a very shabby, far too-laundered pair of trousers and shirt. He'd kept his boots, which was necessary but also a fatal giveaway that he was no French farmer. No one ever was able to change their shoes.

"Go carefully, Lieutenant. Despite the clothes, you'll not fool a German, and certainly not a member of the Milice," Marguerite warned.

Jeanne had herself worried about encountering a member of that dreaded French paramilitary, and she was fluent and far less suspicious than the downed American flyer. "If you see or hear anyone, hide."

"Understood. Thank you. If I do make it back, want me to send word to anyone? Your families? Anyone in your command?"

"That assumes we have command we're reporting to, Lieutenant. Thank you, but no," Marguerite said.

"The less we know of one another, the better."

He nodded. "Right then. One thing. I couldn't help noticing when I was crammed into that compartment in the wagon. Who's using a crossbow against Nazis?"

"That would be me, Lieutenant," Jeanne replied. "It was a gift." It was so tempting to give the Lieutenant a message that might get back to Tebbitt but she didn't dare risk it. She and Marguerite were alone here. 

He grinned. "Well, thank you, Ladies. Give 'em hell for me."

"And you, Lieutenant."

They both turned away so as to not see the direction he went in. Jeanne brought Amélie about and the mule began plodding back to their camp, a little more eagerly. There was dinner waiting for her. _A better one that we shall have_ , Jeanne thought wearily. Another meal of wine, with little else.

"Jeanne? I have been thinking about something."

"Yes?"

"The baby belt you wear. I know you used it with Madame Vion to fool the Nazis in Bénouville but you've been getting some very grim looks from some of the French we are supposed to be liberating."

" _Collaboration horizontale_ ," Jeanne replied, suddenly feeling very angry and knowing what Marguerite was hinting at. "I've been working in a maternity hospital, Marguerite! For those women, it was sex with their occupiers, or starvation. They did not have a choice." She'd had her own Nazi admirer who had provided her with a steady supply of sausages, batteries and wilted flowers and all she'd done was bicycle by Leutnant Becker's checkpoint - and use his distraction with her to smuggle messages to their Resistance contacts in Caen.

"I'm not arguing the point, Jeanne! But the Nazis are gunning down _children_ and burning them alive in churches. What might be done in retaliation to suspected collaborators, I can't imagine but you can be sure no one will be waiting for an airing of facts or a trial. You could - no, _would_ \- be dragged into the street and beaten or worse by partisans and never even have the opportunity to plead your innocence."

Jeanne hated it but also knew Marguerite was correct. She'd heard some of the mutterings herself, that women who collaborated should be publicly humiliated, stripped, shaved, tarred and paraded through the streets. There was a long, ugly history of it. She wondered what Edmund would say, or even Peter. She knew what Lucy would say.

"'No, no!' said the Queen. 'Sentence first–verdict afterward.'"

"Is that from Alice's Adventures?"

"It is," Jeanne replied wearily. She set the reins down, drew her hand up under the baggy skirt, undid the contraption and tossed the belt into the back of the cart with the cabbages and onions.

Maybe the men who had burned women and children alive in the church and murdered a million Jews didn't deserve a trial or a verdict. Did the women who had collaborated with them deserve the same fate? Or the hated Milice who would have turned her over to the Gestapo in a moment if they'd suspected she was really a British spy and not a skinny, sad, French girl working at a maternity hospital?

Justice had never been her province. So, win the War first.

She lifted the reins and clucked to Amélie. "Come on, girl. Let's get home and get you some supper."

"Supper," Marguerite said wistfully and glanced behind her at their load of vegetables. "I imagine boiled cabbage is best with white wine, rather than red."

"Do you suppose all the champagne of Paris is gone, Marguerite?"

"I imagine we'll find a bottle or two when we get there."

Liberation seemed further away than it had ever been. She had somehow thought that the Allied landings would yield a miraculous, swift victory. Instead, every mile was being paid for in more blood. And there was still the long, slow crawl to Berlin.

"Do you think we'll do it, Peggy? Can we really win against all this evil?"

Peggy put an arm over her shoulders. "I do Susan. It feels overwhelming. It's hard to see now, but it is coming. And there's Scotch and real coffee at the end of this road for us both."

"Lipstick," Susan decided. "I'd like a nice, new lipstick."

* * *

The Massacres at Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane, [ here ](https://www.historynet.com/hallowed-ground-oradour-sur-glane-france.htm) and [ here](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/oradour-sur-glane)  
  
Bearing Silent Witness: A Grandfather's Secret Attestation to German War Crimes in Occupied France, American Intelligence Journal (AIJ), Vol. 32, No, 1, 2015, [ Florida Journal of International Law (FJIL), Vol. 25, No. 1, 2013 ](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2122898#)

The Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane, An American lawyer finds new evidence about one of World War II’s most notorious war crimes, seven decades after D-Day, [ Foreign Policy June 5 2014 ](https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/05/the-massacre-at-oradour-sur-glane/)

[ Murphy, Raymond J. (2nd Lt.) ](https://catalog.archives.gov/id/5555509?&sp=%7B%22q%22%3A%22raymond%20murphy%22%2C%22f.ancestorNaIds%22%3A%22305270%22%7D&sr=0), Escape and Evasion Report No. 866, War Department. U.S. Forces, European Theater. Military Intelligence Service (MIS). Escape and Evasion Section (MIS-X). Administration Branch. 7/1/1945-3/10/1947 (maintained in the U.S. National Archives Catalog)

About horizontal collaboration and the _épuration sauvage_ (wild purge) or more polite **_épuration légale_ **(legal purge) [ here ](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/05/women-victims-d-day-landings-second-world-war) and [ here ](https://time.com/5303229/women-after-d-day/)


	2. 12 June 1947

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 12 June 1947, in Nuremberg, U.S. Occupation Zone (formerly Germany).  
> There is cabbage, spying and lipstick but no coffee or scotch (but there is beer).

Susan listlessly stirred her cabbage soup. "You promised me champagne, scotch and coffee, Peggy. Not cabbage."

"But it _was_ _delicious_ cabbage in the Loire," Peggy said.

Her burst of laughter came almost as she was swallowing and she nearly choked. "You are terrible, Peggy."

"Yes. Though not as terrible as this beer."

"The beer is adequate. We _both_ know cabbage tastes better _because_ of the wine."

Susan was pleased that Peggy nearly spit out her own soup with that wildly salacious comment.

She forced herself to drink the rest of it - with food so scarce in Germany, it was unspeakably rude and wasteful to not eat what you were able to get, even if it was terrible. "I still have one packet of American soda crackers in my room. I'll share them with you."

Peggy nodded, dutifully finishing her own soup. "I've got a half a Hershey bar. No Glenlivet, though. We'll make a night of it." At least she didn't wink.

"Please do not be offended when I say, I do hope not and that we are on our way home by then." Susan pushed the bowl away. The waitress, a harried and gaunt older woman, scurried over to pick up their dishes. She looked at the empty bowls so hungrily, Susan now regretted her manners as the woman would probably have eaten the leftovers between their table and the back kitchen.

"And then I'm done," Peggy said, for at least the sixth time. The orders to report to Frankfurt for the next "operation" were in her pocket. "This outfit can get on without my assistance."

They were both on loan to T-Force from their respective organisations. T-Force had started out well enough, ostensibly, an Anglo-American venture to prevent Germany's scientific and industrial assets falling into Soviet hands. Better to endure English or American cooking than Soviet, as the saying went. Peggy had come from S.H.I.E.L.D. to make sure there weren't any other HYDRA scientists or artifacts in the mix and the SIS had sent Susan and Tebbitt to make sure that what S.H.I.E.L.D. knew, British Intelligence also knew.

Gestapo-like tactics to take control of offensive weapons, military applications and the men who built them, Susan could understand and, to a certain extent, justify. But T-Force's recent actions had an aggressive edge that seemed only to further blatantly commercial goals. It looked an awful lot like kidnapping German scientists, chemists, and engineers from their homes and workplaces, spiriting them away to a joint American-British internment camp in Frankfurt and, from there, sending them off to America or England to toil in service of those countries' industry. They were paid but, as near as she and Peggy could determine, there had been no provision at all for the wives and children these German men had been separated from.

There was also a decided lack of curiosity as to the politics of any of these people. They were in Nuremberg and the trials of the Nazi judges who had helped prop up the Third Reich were going on right down the bomb-pocked street. Yet, if any of those judges had a particular skill in synthesizing chemicals or manufacturing machine tools, T-Force would have already snatched them up and exported them to America or England.

"No one has ever been able to explain why we have representatives from pharmaceutical, clothing, and cosmetics companies accompanying us on these little jaunts through the wreck of Germany."

Peggy sipped her beer, her lipstick leaving a faint red mark on the glass. "Oh, I think that reason is clear enough."

"You've spent more time around industrialists than I have, true."

Susan looked about the pub - beer hall - and tapped her finger on the table. Edmund and Tebbitt were late. If this was going to work, they would know soon.

Peggy looked at her watch, thinking the same thing but not saying it.

"They'll get it done," Susan said, wishing she felt as confident as her words. "If Tebbitt can get what he needs, Edmund can do something that will pass any scrutiny. He learned from the best."

"So I've heard." The tense expression on Peggy's face relaxed a fraction. "I would like to see this one succeed."

Susan nodded. "Yes. It doesn't make everything else any less distasteful, but…"

"I feel better leaving with at least one that's defensible, even desirable."

"So, you're definitely going back?" Susan left out, "to S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Yes. It made sense at the time to come here and see for myself. I've not seen any evidence that we missed anything or anyone here." Peggy was referring to the HYDRA installations that had dotted Europe and "artifacts" that especially shouldn't be in Soviet hands. "There's nothing to keep me here now. I wish you would reconsider and come back with me, Susan. The offer still stands."

Susan wasn't sure if she heard something a little pleading. Peggy was usually so crisp. "I would love to, Peggy."

"But..."

It had been tempting, for multiple reasons. She and Peggy were a superb team that, she thought, had yet to reach their full potential. And if Peggy was really and truly in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D., as Howard had promised, maybe it could work. America wasn't as miserable as Europe was. And maybe...

She looked closely but Peggy was all business as usual, tie in place, uniform pressed, lipstick a trifle faded from drinking her beer. Only those few days in France two years ago had revealed another side, which hadn't been _that_ big of a surprise, she supposed. A woman who could hit as hard as Peggy could had hidden depths. She just hadn't expected _those_ depths. 

But this was just flirting now. Peggy's duty was to S.H.I.E.L.D. and she was for England. "Tebbitt and I have been talking about moving to East London and opening a little business. He's so fond of music and poetry, so maybe some writing, piano lessons, and teaching."

Peggy would know what she meant. She and Tebbitt were being reassigned to the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany. The situation was going from bad to hell and they needed to lay down a network while they could - codebreakers, radio operators, pavement artists, and intelligence operatives.

There was a strange expression in Peggy's face she couldn't quite read. Susan arched an eyebrow. Slowly, Peggy said, "I've heard that part of London can be dodgy. Be sure to take care of yourselves."

Susan felt as if there was something significant here, but she couldn't quite grasp it. They didn't dare be more specific or clearer.

She didn't have the opportunity to probe further for the front door swung open and Edmund and Tebbitt hurried in. Susan jumped to her feet; Edmund darted around chairs and tables to throw his arms around her and lift her off the ground. Had it been Christmas since they'd last seen each other?

She drew back to give him a critical once over. His suit was hanging off of him. "You're not sleeping or eating and you're drinking far too much coffee." If others hadn't been around, she would have added, " _and you've obviously not had sex in months._ "

"Good to see you, too, Su. I'll be sure to take your complaints to Prosecutor Taylor and their Honours."

He stuck out his hand. "Agent, it's a pleasure to finally meet you."

Edmund would, of course, know to use Agent rather than Miss.

"And you. I've heard so much about you."

Peggy didn't use his name and Susan wasn't actually sure if Edmund was here under his own name or a cover. Since Edmund had gotten tangled about with Colonel Clark's legal activities in Nuremberg, she had lost all insight into what her brother was doing or why, or under what, if any, direction or authority.

"We're in recess, so I've only got a few minutes." Edmund said, sitting down and moving his fingers across the table, _All's well._ At the same time, he gestured with the other hand and asked for the waitress to bring over a beer. His German was better than her own and with an American accent.

Tebbitt sat down and casually opened his jacket. "Cigarette, anyone?"

Susan saw the envelope in an inner pocket where the case would be.

"No thank you," Peggy replied.

Susan wasn't sure if Peggy had seen the envelope but Tebbitt closed his jacket and tapped out _O.K._ on the table with his lighter and lit a cigarette for himself.

He nodded to Edmund. "I was able to get a little tour of the Justizpalast. The Americans are always happy to help hapless Brits like myself with their paperwork."

Tebbitt helped himself to some of her beer and leaned back in his chair.

"It's really a damned fine day, ladies. I hope we can get outside, appreciate the fine work here, and walk about before we pick up our bags and head home."

_O.K. Paperwork. Damned. Fine. Work. Walk. Pick. Up. Leave. Home._

_They'd done it._ Susan reached out and touched Edmund's hand. "Thank you. For coming to see us."

_Thank you for doing what you did._

"Wouldn't have missed it. It's always a pleasure to stretch my legs, work the shoe leather and come see you, however briefly."

_Stretch my legs. Shoes._

They'd come to the U.S. Occupation Zone to abduct Professor Anton Richter for ICI Chemicals in England but once T-Force realized he was dead, the bulk of the unit had reported back to Frankfort. She and Peggy had realized that Anton's widow, Ilse Richter, with university degrees in biology and chemistry, had been the real mind behind her dead husband's pharmaceutical chemistry innovations. Ilse was desperate to escape Germany with her infant daughter. She and Peggy had brought Ilse and her daughter from München to Nuremberg; Tebbitt had raced ahead, found Edmund, somehow gotten him what he needed, and her brother had been able to make a new pair of shoes - a "damned fine" set of identity papers and transit documents - for Ilse and little Marie. 

She risked a glance at Peggy, who looked exactly as she had before Tebbitt and Edmund had entered the beer hall, except for the fractional lessening of the tension in her shoulders. Dabbing the lipstick from her lips with her napkin, she casually brushed a finger along the side of her nose.

_Understood._

They all chatted for a little bit about nothing. Edmund shared his beer with Peggy, Tebbitt drank the rest of hers and smoked a cigarette.

Edmund finally stood to leave. "I've got to get back. Wheels of justice always turn." He gave her another hug. In her ear, he whispered, "I hear from Tebbitt you're off to East London. Stay safe."

"I will."

She dashed away her tears and noticed Peggy was looking a little misty-eyed. Peggy had lost her own brother during the war. Edmund shook Tebbitt and Peggy's hands -- he was much less hostile to Tebbitt than he used to be -- and dashed out the door.

Tebbitt patted down his pockets, apparently looking for his cigarette case and verifying that the envelope with Professor Ilse and Marie Richter's forged papers was still there. He wedged himself between her and Peggy and looped his arms in theirs. "Ladies, I've got our tickets."

"Our bags," Peggy said, "will be very happy to be leaving Germany and coming home."

* * *

[ How T-Force abducted Germany's best brains for Britain ](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2007/aug/29/sciencenews.secondworldwar)

[ About T-Force ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Force)

There is a lot of material about the Justices Trial in Nuremberg. The trial was from 5 March 1947 to 4 December 1947. It was dramatized in the 1961 film Judgment at Nuremberg. [ Telford Taylor ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telford_Taylor) was the Chief Prosecutor, a man of immense intelligence who later became even more widely known for his opposition to Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Vietnam War.


	3. 12 June 1950

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 12 June 1950 - The Atlantic Ocean and the Northeastern United States. Susan takes a trip after burying the dead.  
> There is spying, lipstick, scotch and coffee but no cabbage.

* * *

Susan wrote and posted the last thank you note, took down the wreath, and packed away in her closet the black suit (Schiaparelli) and matching black hat with little veil and pumps. She packed the latest, and still unread, correspondence from the family solicitor in her trunk and piled on top of that, her stockings, daywear, two evening gowns, five pairs of heels, and an astonishingly large quantity of French lingerie. Under these items, she rolled up and stowed two pairs of black trousers and matching shirts, trainers and plimsolls, one of Tebbitt's shirts she still enjoyed sleeping in and another that she would wear over a romper with the tails tied about her waist. Her straw hat, summer any-timer, and ribbon hat were set carefully on top.

Under these items, in a fake bottom of her trunk, she had a Colt M1911 taken from a dead American GI somewhere between Le Mans and Paris in August 1944, a De Lisle Carbine (a sniper's weapon and gift), a Welrod (in her judgment too unreliable to be the assassination weapon it was intended to be but better to be prepared) and her Little and Big Joe crossbows (gifts from Tebbitt she would, if she had her preference, be buried with). Susan also packed her professional set of lockpicks (sized for European and American locks) and, next to them, passports and identification cards from three countries, and currency from four.

She was running short on lipstick.

There were alternating teams of two trailing her from the moment she left London. Given the expense, she almost wished she was flying to America rather than sailing from Southampton. She would have taken vicious pleasure in forcing them to pay the exorbitant cost of a transatlantic air flight given how worthless the ruble and East German mark were on worldwide currency markets.

The longer voyage, though, was part of the cover and story she'd been carefully crafting and loudly broadcasting for three months - _I need to get out of Europe. I need some time, alone. I just want to travel. I want to see a place that doesn't have graveyards and unexploded ordnance._

She'd wondered if they would be well funded and motivated enough to follow her onto the boat or just have someone meet the ship when they docked in New York and hope they wouldn't lose her trail. Arranging some sleight of hand for sneaking off the ship before they were at sea or right before disembarking was something she might have done with Tebbitt. The feint, though, wasn't worth the planning, effort, and expense. She had her cover and would stick with it. Susan was playing a long game and she could wait them out.

Two men followed her from the train station in Southampton to the ship and, by the time she had boarded and was tipping the porter bringing her trunk to her tiny, but first class, cabin, she spotted them through her portside window hurrying aboard. So she would have company all the way to New York.

Her berth on the liner was barely large enough for herself, her trunk, and the bunk she would sleep in, but the privacy was worth the expense and inconvenience. Susan removed the disassembled Welrod and the magazines for the Colt from her trunk and put those in her handbag. She'd modified her bag over the years - it was too large to be strictly fashionable anymore but the compartment in the bottom had first held a gas mask, then a camera, and now easily held the Welrod barrel. The magazines and lockpicks were also secreted in her handbag. The Little Joe just fit in her bag and was more accurate than the Welrod but it was also a little awkward with the darts and bands so she reluctantly left it in the trunk. 

It was pleasant to think she might be able to kill both of her pursuers quietly and dump their bodies at sea. However, getting rid of the surveillance now would bring more of it down upon her when they arrived in the States and the agents dutifully trailing her neglected to check-in.

She was beaten, defeated, sacked, and done - that's what she wanted to convey. Not the relentless, diligent Hound or the patient Wolf stalking its prey.

Because she couldn't quite give up her old habits, she did put the familiar traps in, just to tell her when they tumbled her cabin - the splints in the hinges, the hairs that would break or move when something was opened. They would find the De Lisle and the crossbows but they wouldn't take those. They might take her Colt, but she wasn't supposed to have noticed they were there at all and they undoubtedly had Lugers or Walthers of their own. It wasn't weapons they would take; it would be things that were still so hard to come by in Europe and especially behind the Iron Curtain even five years after the War ended, things like hard currency, American cigarettes, chocolate bars, and condoms. She made a point of keeping the condoms in her handbag with the magazines and the Welrod, just to spite them.

Dinner the first night was one more effort she didn't want to make. She didn't feel up to spinning an alias when the young, grief-stricken, damaged woman was so close to the truth. Her dining companions were all charming -- two enthusiastic maiden aunts-childhood chums on their first sea voyage, a newlywed couple, and a grandfather traveling with his grandson who was a little too smitten. The last was a man who introduced himself as Robert Walker and she immediately cataloged him as a potential honey trap - wedding ring but no wife and no valet on this voyage given the state of his suit, Oxbridge, maybe a Viscount in the family tree and a gamekeeper on the family estate, combat, and probably some branch of the intelligence services. His pronunciation was so perfect, he could have read for the BBC. In fact, as he chatted with the ladies he was seated between, she thought she recognized his voice and felt a sudden pang for the _messages personnels_ over the BBC she had waited for from Tebbitt during her months in France.

She excused herself at the salads.

The next three days were quiet and lonely. She skipped the evening dinners and kept to herself, playing the part, though it was no act, of the young woman wrapped in mourning - an image familiar to every Briton on the ship. The aunts, Miss Jones and Miss Smith, invited her to tea twice and the Grandfather took her arm, walked the deck with her, and talked of his garden in Kent, his Labradors, and the sons he had lost on the beaches of Dunkirk and Algiers.

Her shadows didn't engage or harass her and she seldom saw them, except in the way that one customarily did on an ocean liner. They didn't try to follow her into the first class parts of the ship. One was short, one was tall, they both were fit, had dark hair and eyes and they would rotate throughout the day. They turned over her room twice and were professional enough to have found and replaced four, but not all five, of her tripwires. She didn't find any camera or recording device; they undoubtedly realized she was simply in transit as they were and any such efforts would be wasted.

The fourth night, and they would only have one more night at sea, the ladies, now Mary and Betty, persuaded her to come to dinner. She put on her Vionnet, lipstick and kitten heels, and did her hair in a sleek roll. She added the Colt to her overly large handbag and didn't worry that it didn't match her shoes.

She reintroduced herself to the table and Mr. Walker held her chair for her. "Mrs. Tebbitt, how good of you to join us."

Dinner was fine, enjoyable even. Mr. Walker was a pleasant dining companion even though Mary and Betty were both engaged in some not-so-subtle matchmaking.

"His wife died from a Doodlebug, almost at the end of the war," Mary whispered to her. "So tragic."

She heard Betty telling Mr. Walker, "Mrs. Tebbitt's husband died only this year. Appendicitis."

As her table companions were on their fourth night with each other, Susan's stories were a welcome addition to what might have become stale conversation. Peter crammed into a glider that crashed into Pegasus Bridge on D-Day always held an audience's rapt attention through at least the main course. A few anecdotes about Lucy and the Red Cross and Edmund in Nuremberg got them to dessert.

"And with such accomplished siblings, Mrs. Tebbitt, surely your own contributions to the Allied victory are no less remarkable?"

"Not at all, Mr. Walker. I'm quite the ordinary one of the family." The cover lie flowed easily. "I was a typist for the Joint Technical Board in the War Office."

Mr. Walker's widening eyes confirmed her suspicion. He recognized the Joint Technical Board for what it had been - one of the many covers for the Special Operations Executive. She heard Major al-Masri's often repeated caution to never assume that men of a certain breeding and education were, by virtue of that breeding and education, loyal and competent. She felt a small stab of sympathy for Walker seemed more unnerved than curious or deceptive under the impeccable manners. He busied himself with his after-dinner coffee and said nothing more.

Susan directed the conversation away, not wishing to expose him further. "Miss Jones and Miss Smith, do tell me more about your planned holiday? Will you be staying long in New York?"

She was not surprised when Mr. Walker joined her out on the deck after dinner. She declined the politely offered cigarette; with one hand on her scotch, she wanted to keep the other one free. Mr. Walker shrugged in his wrinkled, too large suit and put the case away.

She turned. He hesitated and then followed. As she had both seen it and was still in throes of it herself, Susan knew the symptoms. _He's still grieving._ She slowed and moved to the inside so that he was at the rail and they walked the deck.

It was lovely, warm, calm, and very good to be at sea. She'd missed seeing stars this way.

"Allow me to express my condolences on the passing of your husband. Appendicitis, I thought Miss Jones said."

"Yes," Susan replied. "It was very sudden. A violent attack."

They'd not been able to recover Tebbitt's body. She assumed he was buried somewhere in Soviet-controlled Berlin. They still weren't sure who had gunned him down, the newly created Stasi, or some branch of the Soviet security forces.

Mr. Walker slowed and looked about and leaned against the rail. He dropped his voice to a whisper. "You _have_ noticed those two men, the ones who never change their shoes?"

She laughed. Pavement artists who didn't change their shoes was always a tell. It confirmed that Walker had had some intelligence training. _But by whom?_

"Yes. We're old friends. They've been with me since London."

"I had wondered, at first, if they might be following me, but I realized that was fanciful hubris."

She appreciated the self-deprecating humour.

"I did not take any action as you did not seem overly concerned, Mrs. Tebbitt. But there is no need for them to trouble you when we arrive in New York. We could alert the ship's Sergeant-of-Arms and they might message New York. The F.B.I. could be awaiting them when we dock."

Susan shook her head. "Thank you, but if they'd meant to harm me, I would have never boarded." She glanced about but did not see anyone lurking in the shadows who was concerning. They were still on the first class deck. "If Ivan and his younger brother are arrested, I'll waste days or weeks identifying the ones sent to replace them."

He nodded and she appreciated deeply that he did not attempt to argue with her. He'd definitely had some intelligence training and, better still, he recognized and respected that she was also a professional. "Better the enemy you know?"

"Precisely." She had said it so often, she believed it. It wasn't wrong. Nor was it the whole truth. Susan affected a heavy sigh. "As I'm sure you can understand, Mr. Walker, this has been very difficult and traumatic. I'm looking to do nothing more than sightseeing, shop, and see places that are not bomb craters. I'm exhausted and just want to nurse my grief, alone. I'm sure," and she tilted her head toward the lower deck stairs, "my companions will soon see that I have no agenda whatsoever and will leave me in peace."

"Forgive me, then, for intruding. It did not mean to imply you were not …" For an articulate man, he struggled with the word. "Capable. I did wonder if my wife…my late wife... if perhaps you knew her?"

"What was her name?"

"Simone Michel Walker?"

"She was French?"

"Yes. She…" His lie was not quite smooth enough. "She was also in the War Department. In an office off Baker Street."

So, Simone Michel Walker may have been in the SOE, the Baker Street Irregulars. She'd probably died somewhere in France, or been captured and sent to Ravensbruck and had died there.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Walker, I didn't know her. I do understand the pain of not knowing. Reginald was stricken with appendicitis very suddenly. In," she paused, "Germany." Susan wouldn't need to spell it out for him. "I wasn't able to bring him home."

 _Either_ was unspoken.

He nodded and sipped his brandy. They seemed to have stopped the walk and now were just standing at the railing. "Thank you. Perhaps now you can forgive my officiousness. I'd wondered if someone had seen her in trouble … for Simone, well, perhaps they might have been able to help her. I apologize for the misplaced effort at protective gallantry."

"No apology is necessary. Might I ask you something in return, sir?"

"Certainly, Mrs. Tebbitt."

"Your voice seemed familiar to me. Did you read for the radio?"

"You have an astute ear. I was an announcer for much of 1944. If I was fortunate, I would be able to read the _messages personnels_. I thought..." He stopped and corrected himself. "Simone said she enjoyed it."

_You hoped your wife would hear you._

"I'm sure that meant a great deal to her."

"If it is not too presumptuous, Mrs. Tebbitt, but…" Walker moved his drink from one hand to another and removed a card from the inner pocket of his dinner jacket. "I'm in New York for several weeks for my paper and then going back to London for the BBC. If you would like to contact me later, _much later_ of course, when you return…"

The proffered card seemed poised between them for so long a time, it was probably rude. She didn't want this; Susan didn't want suitors or lovers, she didn't want things or people foisted upon her. She just wanted to know what had happened to Tebbitt. She didn't want anything to do with this frightfully kind, grief-stricken man.

_Who is as alone as I am with no resolution and no answers._

She took his card. "Perhaps by Christmas, Mr. Walker."

* * *

Susan shook hands with her tablemates and they exchanged cards and all promised to write to one another. They were all charming, kind, and pressed her to enjoy her peace and complete her mourning.

A good part of her mourning she left in her tiny first class cabin. One could grieve and do things at the same time and Susan was ready _to do_ something. Which, given that she still had two spies trailing in her wake meant that, for the time being, she could do absolutely nothing. They would run out of money, time and patience before she did.

She spent two weeks in New York, dining out, seeing Broadway shows and motion pictures, spending long periods of time at the Metropolitan, shopping, and reading magazines and newspapers. She bought many, many postcards and stamps and began sending short, cheerful missives to her new friends from the ship, to her parents, and to Peter, Edmund, and Lucy, to Eustace, Jill, the Professor, Miss Plummer, school chums, and anyone else she could think of.

The Central Park hotel also had ample stationery and postcards with its name and address. On her third day in New York, she went to a salon to get her hair done and left a magazine near the hair dryers with a stamped postcard from the hotel inserted at a page on summer beauty tips. The postcard was dated and addressed to Miss Marguerite Bernard at a post office box in Wheaton, New Jersey and just said, "Loving New York, Jeanne F."

Three days later, when she was getting her nails done, she left another magazine, with a postcard addressed to Marguerite Bernard bookmarking an article on refreshing summer coolers. This one said, "New York is lovely, I wish you were here. Jeanne I." She gave another magazine to the hotel maid, this one with a postcard signed "Jeanne L." She left another postcard in a menu at a delicatessen from "Jeanne E." And then, she started all over again, and left four postcards in a succession of taxi cabs.

Four postcards, to an anonymous New Jersey address spelling _F.I.L.E._ from Jeanne.

Some of those postcards, she was certain, would be picked up by helpful someones, and those persons would be her mules to the post office. 

If her tail had known she was communicating with S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Peggy Carter, they would have never left her alone. That was surely why they had followed her here. Instead, they began to get bored with her sightseeing. They dutifully turned her room over three times the first week. She didn't find any recording devices or cameras but had she used the phone, they might have found a way to tap into it. By the second week, they only searched her room once. They were looking more and more ragged and were becoming visibly exhausted with the amount of time she tarried at cosmetic counters and in the ladies' shoe and lingerie sections of Manhattan department stores. Susan hadn't seen such a selection of lipstick in years.

At the end of the second week, Susan checked out of her hotel, hired a car and drove north. She wanted to see Niagara Falls, visit Toronto, eat pastry, drink Canadian whiskey and strong, black coffee, and arrange for more mules to send postcards from Canada.

The trip across the border had another advantage. She lost her tail for a week and it took them three days to find her again when she returned through Rochester. Susan then drove to Saratoga Springs to catch a few days of the summer racing season at the track - and left postcards at the Clubhouse and the ladies' salon in her hotel.

By the time she drove south again, her tails were, she was certain, broke, exhausted, and wondering how it was possible for one woman to spend so much time in department stores, watching maudlin movies, and aimlessly walking the New Jersey shoreline collecting shells. She saw no one, spoke to no one, received nothing, and apart from the fashion magazines, left nothing behind. By Philadelphia, and a full 45 days from when she disembarked, they gave up. She waited another four days but no one appeared. No one tumbled her room. No one dashed into doorways, laundromats or pubs if she turned around too quickly. No one nearly got run over by a lorry to follow her when she suddenly crossed the street. There had been no door slams, swearing, or brake squeals. No one wearing the same pair of shoes for days at a time followed her.

That was the day she drove to S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters hidden at Camp Lehigh, New Jersey to find out the truth about who had killed her husband.

* * *

For this, she dressed the part, severe suit, sensible shoes, the Colt in her handbag, and her proper, legitimate, SIS identification and diplomatic passport, and no, she didn't have an appointment, but Director Carter was expecting her.

The guards made her put her gun in a locker. Given the security, she assumed the guards and MPs knew who she was. She was flattered that she merited two armed escorts.

She had understood that, like the basement Cabinet War Rooms she and Peggy had worked in during the War, S.H.I.E.L.D. was in a deep underground bunker. But the guards escorted her to an above ground outbuilding and a plain conference room with a table, four chairs, and a real window.

Her heart sank and her anger rose. All this way and there would be no F.B.I. or S.H.I.E.L.D. file. One didn't reveal top secret files in windowed conference rooms.

An aide, a nervous looking young man, brought in a tray with coffee, set it on the table and ran out of the room. Susan wanted to call out, "I won't hurt you!" but the humourless MPs at the door didn't seem likely to appreciate any such levity. Peggy had promised coffee, after all.

She heard Peggy's sharp, strong steps echoing on the industrial linoleum.

"That's all, gentlemen, thank you," Peggy said. "Please shut the door on your way out."

The door clicked shut. She could hear the sounds of a truck loitering outside and Peggy's breathing. They stared at each other and then moved at the same moment, lunging to one another and hugging each other fiercely.

"I'm so sorry."

Susan didn't think she could weep anymore and she was surprised that Peggy was. "Here, don't," she said roughly and thrust a handkerchief at Peggy, who of course, had her own. "You'll blur your mascara and the men will mock you."

Peggy choked on an ironic laugh. "They can't. I'm their boss."

"Thank you for the note. It meant the world to me, Peggy."

They both managed to edge to seats and sat, facing one another; Peggy was still holding her hands. "How are you, really? Apart from driving your surveillance to an early grave?"

"I'm glad you didn't pick them up. Thank you."

"Oh, the F.B.I. wanted to, but I told them that they'd just put people on you we already knew and that we'd learn more if we watched how well trained these new Stasi agents are. But enough about that. How are you, Susan, really?"

Susan withdrew her hands from Peggy's and clasped them in her lap. She'd not intended to lead with this but it was plain what was happening here. There was no need for preliminaries.

"How do you think I'm doing? How long did it take after Steve went down before you could eat a normal meal or sleep a full night? How long before the nightmares stopped? It's the uncertainty, the lack of finality that eats away at you." She paused. "The worst _is not knowing what happened_."

Peggy sat back in her seat, lips pressed in an angry line.

"That's underhanded, Susan."

"And you would have done the exact same thing. You did. Peggy, there has to be a F.B.I. file. There has to be."

"I can't give it to you."

And there it was. For two spies, they got to honesty pretty quickly. But then, she and Peggy had never been very good at lying to one another.

"Why not?"

Susan didn't like Peggy's knowing scoff. "Are you that much of a field agent you don't know?"

"Know what?" she pressed. "Why can't you give it to me?"

Peggy broke eye contact and poured her a cup of coffee, adding the amount of sugar and milk she knew was her preference. She slid the cup over.

"I want to, Susan. But I can't. That was made very clear to me when I asked for the file two weeks ago. I was told, on pain of prosecution for violating U.S. secrecy laws, that I couldn't share it with you."

"But _why_ not? We've worked together _for years,_ Peggy. France? T-Force? S.H.I.E.L.D.? None of that matters?"

"The fear is that you could be part of it, Susan."

"Me? But…" The steaming cup almost slipped from her fingers and she set it down swiftly. Secrecy she could understand. But they thought, _Peggy thought,_ she could be _a double agent?_ "You can't believe that of me."

"Susan, you know there are things about you, about your whole family, that have never made any sense."

"Says the woman who helped run the Super Soldier project?," she replied acidly. "Who took down HYDRA bases and their artifacts all over occupied Europe?"

"Don't engage in that ploy. There are Soviet schools that recruit and train girls to be assassins."

"That's ridiculous."

"The school? It isn't. I told you about Dottie Underwood. I've seen the school myself."

"I don't sleep handcuffed to a bed," she scoffed.

"I suppose not," Peggy agreed with a sly smirk that made Susan smile despite the situation.

She rested her hands on her knees and leaned forward. "Can you give me anything, Peggy? I've come all this way. There's nowhere else to go."

Peggy sipped her own coffee, leaving a dark red stain on the rim of the white porcelain. "Again, I'll urge you to think less like a field agent and ask yourself why you didn't take your suspicions up your own chain within MI6."

"I did."

_And they did nothing. They brushed me aside. They told me it was just grief._

"Susan, S.H.I.E.L.D. believes that the Soviets are trying to use MI6 to get to us, through our shared intelligence agreements. If I share what we know, and you take it back, then _they might_ know, too."

"They, _you,_ think I might be reporting back to Moscow? My husband _died!_ I want to know what happened!" _I want revenge._ She wasn't able to keep her frustration and anger from rising with her voice. She took a sip of the scalding coffee to try to cool down.

"It doesn't even have to be you, Susan, although yes, there are some who've asked me that. I've firmly denied it. So has Stark."

That soothed.

"But it doesn't matter. If you share what we know with the wrong person, then everything we know goes straight to the Stasi and the KGB. And surely, the reason you were followed all the way here was because they are desperate to know whether you have actually compromised their operation yet, or if you're just operating from the instincts of a good agent."

She'd concluded that herself. It was why it had taken over six weeks to get to windowed conference room and still no answers. "Please, Peggy, can't you tell me anything? Somewhere to start?"

"Well, I could try to say, just let it go, there's nothing you can do, but that's ridiculous."

"Thank you for not insulting me."

"Of course not, Susan." She put her hands over Susan's own again, lowered her voice, and spoke the truth Susan had crossed an ocean to hear. "Tebbitt was executed. I tell you truly, _I don't know_ who did it or why. If my own people know, they don't trust me with that information for the same reason they don't trust you with it. There's a strong belief on this side of the Atlantic that MI6 is an open channel to the Soviets. I also am certain that any British field agent operating in a Soviet satellite state is at risk. That's all I can say."

It wasn't what she had come for but Peggy's tacit confirmation was a step closer than she had been. "Who do I trust, Peggy?"

"Yourself. And me. Stay here. Don't go back. Work for me."

"That's why you have kept asking me to come to S.H.I.E.L.D." Susan replied. "You have been trying to protect me."

Peggy laughed at her and rolled her eyes. "You have never needed protection, Susan. But if the SIS has turned itself inside out in service to the KGB, it's not safe for anyone who is loyal and good at their job."

"Like Tebbitt."

She nodded. "He wasn't the first, Susan. He won't be the last."

Peggy released her hands and reached for her coffee cup. "There is one other thing I can tell you. There's an F.B.I. file on your brother, Edmund. From when he was here in Washington. They think there was a Soviet attempt to recruit him, possibly through blackmail with an ill-advised…"

When Peggy hesitated, Susan supplied "Liaison?"

Peggy nodded. "Yes."

Edmund would have never fallen for a honey trap. And she didn't see why a sexual relationship could result in Edmund being coerced into blackmail to avoid its disclosure given what the Embassy had tolerated and even encouraged. Unless, of course, it had been with another man, which, knowing Edmund, was highly likely. 

Peggy looked uncomfortable enough to confirm her suspicion.

"And?"

"They could not confirm that Edmund ever took the bait. He returned to England and since then, a lot of people have vouched for him. I personally think Edmund is a curiosity to the watchers. There's a lot of admiration for his skill in the field and how he seems to dance his way out of trouble, including this apparent recruitment attempt."

"He has been assiduously recruited for the British services."

"I think the F.B.I. might have looked more closely but he went to Oxford."

Every word was carefully chosen.

"Yes, Oxford was the university of choice for both my brothers. Major al-Masri warned our whole family against Cambridge years ago."

At best, that Cambridge mob were talented amateurs, Asim had said At worst, there was a darkness that had made the man deeply uneasy. 

"I'm sorry I never had the opportunity to meet the Major. He offered very sound advice."

Susan wondered what, if anything, Asim would have seen in Peggy Carter.

"So what will you do now, Susan? Will you stay?"

_With me?_

She wasn't ready for that with anyone. But eventually, she would be, just as Peggy had eventually recovered from Steve. If she stayed, maybe they could pretend, the way that women did, two friends sharing a flat and a bed. She'd suspected Peggy had had an arrangement of that sort with her friend, Angie. 

But then what? It would last, for a time. But if they were found out, it would ruin them. This was, Susan realized, another reason Peggy had told her about the F.B.I.'s speculation concerning Edmund. Love wasn't a strong enough reason for either of them to destroy the careers that it took so much effort to build. They'd always have the road to Paris.

"Thank you for the offer. Yes, I'm going to stay here in the States for a little while, but not here." The idea began to shape into a solid plan. 

"I have to go back to Washington. To the Embassy."

She needed to know what the F.B.I. knew. And that wasn't going to be something she could learn back in London. The conclusion to that chapter might be someone hanging for treason or a lifetime imprisonment.

"Washington is where this all started. That's where this will end."


	4. 4 April 1984

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4 April 1984, London, Horse Guards Road, Cabinet War Rooms.  
> There is lipstick and scotch, probably no spying and no coffee or cabbage.

Peace demonstrators, miner strikes and youth gangs running riot. It was nice to see a proper celebration from when England instead of America led the world. 

Andy braced himself so that Angie could stand on her tiptoes for a look over the heads of the crowd queuing up behind the barricade. His wife had hoped the Royals might show up. He was really hoping to shake Maggie’s hand or maybe the hand of one of the Churchills, not that he’d be able to pick one out in a crowd. Or maybe you could, maybe you could just tell if someone was a Churchill. 

Being taller, he could see without much trouble. “I don’t see the Princess,” he told his wife.

She sank back down with a disappointed sigh. “She’s due in September. Maybe she wasn’t up for all the fuss. Hopefully we’ll see her at Easter with little Prince William.” 

“What do you suppose it’s like down there?” He was mad to see the Cabinet War Rooms. He’d tried for years to get a tour, made probably a score of written requests, all politely declined. Now it was open again. In a few months, he'd queue up to go, once the crowds thinned out, maybe during the hols. He didn't want to experience this place with ruddy schoolchildren and gawkers. Maybe he could get in on a day reserved just for veterans who would give the Rooms the proper veneration they deserved. His wife, however, was definitely not one of them.

"What's it like?" Angie shrugged. “It’s a basement. Probably dark.”

“Just imagine, though, how they locked it all up. Japan surrenders fifteen August 1945 and they just turn off the lights, close the door, and no one goes in again for another 30 years.” He’d scrounged jumble sales and boot fairs but it was impossible to know if something had really come from the Cabinet War Rooms. Was it just a yellowed map of North Africa or was it really a map, stuck with pins, from the Torch landings planning that had hung on the walls of the underground bunker Winston Churchill had stayed in? He’d seen photographs of the signs the weather officers would post that would tell those underground what it was like outside, “snowy, “raining,” and the like. He’d wanted those weather signs for years. 

Maggie came out from one of the government buildings at the top of the Clive steps with some people he thought were Churchills. Maggie was looking damned fine. Everyone mostly cheered. There were a few louts who shouted some impolite things but they didn’t know what they were about. Maggie was the best PM since Churchill in Andy’s opinion. They all stood and waved and then started down the steps to go into the War Rooms. He waved back and figured he’d push his way to the front of the barricade for a handshake when the group came out again. By that time, it might have started to rain and the crowd would have thinned. 

There was a good sized group going for their tour who followed Maggie down the steps. That made sense. The War Rooms had been big enough for cabinet meetings and war planning. There were probably tunnels that connected them all the way to Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. Maybe some secret escapes out to the Thames or to an airstrip, too. There were a lot of old men and a few women in the group, probably War Office staff or from the Air Ministry who had worked there. It was good to see those heroes and pensioners getting their due respect. Maybe, besides shaking Maggie's hand, he could get some autographs when they came out and find out if they were selling any memorabilia from their time in the Cabinet War Rooms. 

“Oh!” Angie exclaimed next to him, standing on her tiptoes again. “Look at that!”

“What?” 

“Those two ladies, near the end, in the suits?”

They were all wearing suits. He paid such things no mind at all unless it was Maggie in a suit. Especially that blue one. 

She pointed. "Them!"

“What about them, luv?”

"You don’t recognize them?”

“No.”

He put a hand on Angie’s elbow so she could keep on her tiptoes and wave at the two ladies coming down the steps. They were walking arm and arm. One of them had a really big handbag, bigger even than Maggie’s.

“Honestly, Andrew, there are other women besides Margaret Thatcher in the world. That’s Dame Peggy and Dame Susan. _Everyone_ knows them -- they're called _Damned Pegasus_ in the papers.” His wife giggled at her own joke, which he didn’t think was very funny. “They were both appointed to Dame Commander the same day. They both wore Armani to the ceremony.”

“What’s she got in the bag, nuclear codes?”

“That’s Dame Susan. Rumor is that in her handbag, she always carries a crossbow for herself, a pair of brass knuckles for Dame Peggy, and a flask of Glenlivet they share.”

He had to admit, they both looked nearly as fine as Maggie. "I think they're wearing too much lipstick but they've got good taste in scotch."  
  



	5. Early 2014 Washington D.C.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Early 2014, Northwest Washington D.C., Assisted Living Facility providing memory and elder care support.  
> There is scotch and lipstick, probably no spying, and no coffee or cabbage.

Crossing the ocean to come and see Peggy was turning out to have been a very poor idea.

“Do you want me to turn it off?” Susan asked, again. 

“No,” Peggy replied. “Stop asking.” 

Peggy’s memory today was regrettably good enough to remember each of the previous eight times Susan had tried to get her to change the channel from CNN to something less provocative, like Animal Planet or the History Channel, assuming it was actually showing something about World War II rather than aliens. It was remarkable how wrong the History Channel could be on both counts and it was always sure to get Peggy ranting and out of her hospital bed.

The face of Steve Rogers, known terrorist, was on every channel and her phone had been pinging nonstop with alerts. There had been a horrific car chase in the streets three days ago and, though neither of them had access to intel any more, they’d both heard the rumor that Nick Fury was dead. The implication was that Steve had killed him.

Peggy’s grand-niece had told her not to believe anything. Something, though, was very, very wrong. 

“Why couldn’t you have returned to England like a civilised person? Isn’t Washington, D.C., a place you get away from, rather than retire to?” Peggy's assisted living facility seemed fine, elegant and competent. In Washington, D.C., there was probably a lot of interest in making sure spies were well cared for as they aged and their memories faded. 

“The climate is beastly, I grant.” Peggy switched the channel to MSNBC then back to CNN. 

“Good heavens, what is that?”

Under a scrolling chyron reading “BREAKING NEWS LIVE” water was parting like some giant sea monster and three enormous -- Susan didn’t even know what they were -- aircraft carrier-like things were slowly rising into the air. 

Peggy gasped. “That’s the Triskelion, S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters.”

Susan stared at the screen, _Live from the Watergate._ They were less than five miles from whatever was going on.

Peggy’s phone lit up with a message from Sharon, “Get to cover.”

Outside Peggy’s room, Susan could hear shouts and cries. Were the residents and staff reacting to hellfire raining down only a few miles away? Or was it something else? 

“Get cover where?” Peggy muttered irritably. “I’m in a memory care facility without a bunker ten stories underground.” 

Susan pulled herself up from her chair next to Peggy’s bed, hobbled over to the door and shut it. 

“As you are already up, can you get to my clothes press, Susan? Top drawer? Cosmetics bag?” 

Susan crossed the room, uncomfortable that her back was to the door. Sirens began mingling with shouts and she heard a helicopter overhead. 

The drawer, fortunately, slid open easily. “Found it,” she said. She unlatched the case. “You really shouldn’t keep lipstick that long, Peggy. It goes bad.”

She took out the Walther and a magazine Peggy had put in the cosmetics bag. 

“Load it for me, would you?”

“Can you still hold a pistol?” Susan asked. “Aim it?”

_Remember what you’re shooting at?_

“Oh hush, you. Just give me my gun.”

Susan hobbled back to her chair, handed Peggy the Walther and then eased back into her chair. She’d changed from a handbag to a backpack in about 1990 and pulled her Little Joe from it.

Peggy was slowly flexing her gnarled fingers around the barrel and grip. 

“Do you need help?” 

“No.” She wrapped both hands around the gun and rested them in her lap. “I taught you the two-handed grip, remember?”

Susan turned the TV to mute and they watched what appeared to be a pitched battle from the ground directed at three enormous carriers. Was she witnessing a coup? Were they all going to be annihilated in a matter of minutes? She wanted to send texts to her daughters but what would she say? 

She heard rapid fire shots -- gunfire -- in the building and getting closer. More screams, and then footsteps running toward them. 

The door banged open. A man stood in the doorway, dressed all in black, with a red and black patch on his shoulder -- a skull with six tentacle legs.

He brandished a gun, shouted, “Hail Hyd…”

They fired at the same time, two bullets and one arrow-bolt, right in the chest. He went down with a gurgle and not a word of complaint.

There were more screams, a nurse came into view in the doorway, took in the carnage, shrieked and bolted.

“Lower the gun, Peggy,” Susan said, then pulled herself up. It would be nice if Peggy could cover her, but she wasn't confident enough in Peggy's memory. The intruder was definitely dead. It was too much effort to bend down to pick up his gun, so she pushed it away with her foot. The gun, it was some cheap American thing, skittered away under Peggy’s bed. She hoped she remembered to have someone collect it. His body was right in the doorway, so she couldn’t shut the door. The insignia on his black jacket was definitely HYDRA. 

She tottered back to her chair, braced herself against Peggy’s bed, and sat down again. She set the Little Joe back in her lap.

Peggy was staring at the dead man bleeding on the floor. “Susan?”

“Yes, Peggy dearest?”

“What year is it?”

“2013, no, 2014.” 

“Where am I?”

“Washington, D.C.”

“So, I’m not in Nazi Germany?”

“No, my dear, we are not.”

“And yet, we just shot and killed a HYDRA agent?”

“So it would seem.”

"So it's not just my memory? This makes no sense?"

"None at all."

Peggy slowly reached to her nightstand drawer and opened it. There was a half-full bottle of Glenlivet inside. “It’s not cabbage, but I think I could use a drink.” 

  
  
  
  



End file.
